One of the reasons there are so many movies about the painful experiences we all had in high school is that high school aged kids are unable to move beyond the personal. It’s all about their efforts to claim and defend identities they don’t know whether or not they actually want or will be able to defend. There’s lots of high drama about who likes whom, who still has those cooties they had in elementary school, who should be included in the in-group and who just has to be treated as “other,” just because. This drama is part of an effort to protect one’s fragile identity by being part of a group. If you are part of this group and not that, perhaps people won’t question your right to have the identity the group performs. I was part of that scene. you probably were, too. It was too humiliating and dangerous not to be, but mostly I hid behind the covers of novels.
This preface is by way of saying, that I’m not interested in duplicating that scene. When I got wind of a rumor that “the dean hates the Psych and English Departments” and that Nancy Welch really gets her dander up, I thought: time to talk about this, time to talk about me. I don’t “other” departments and I don’t want to be the “other.” I don’t want to lead a College where people think that decisions are the result of personal animosity or favoritism.
A bit of recent history. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a donor a thank you note for giving the Psych Dept a gift. In it, I alluded to the high quality of the Dept. I got an e-mail from the donor. The gift was meant for Psychiatry and how dare I praise one department over others that he knew had merit. I wrote him back: the Psych Dept has more majors than any other Dept in the College and, as far as I could tell, taught them well. It had a complex set of graduate programs in several specialties, at least one of which was very highly ranked nationally. The College has three Green and Gold Professorships and, as of fall, the Dept will have two of them. The faculty of the Dept routinely win national awards and the Dept brings in a remarkable number of federally-funded grants. Since I’ve come we’ve hired a raft of really fabulous junior folks who are beginning to really take off as scholar-teachers. The Department is collegial, has a model mentoring system for junior faculty and is well run. The donor wrote me an e-mail conceding and confirming that his funding had been moved where he intended it to go.
My point is that I don’t hate the Psych Dept. I don’t hate departments as a matter of principle. This isn’t high school; this isn’t who I am. In fact, the Dept is a gem, but so are others. Has it suffered in the same ways others have during this downturn? Of course it has, but I don’t think more than others, and it’s been the cite of significant investment.
On to the English Department. Why would anyone in English think the Dean “hates the Department?” I think the issue in English is that the Dept feels that I haven’t kept up with the faculty retirements they’ve had, but who knows? English has also suffered from the rescission in ways peculiar to it because so much instruction in the Dept was delivered by part-time lecturers. The pressure of the student/faculty ratio is a much better explanation for recent change in that area than is the personal animosity of the dean. However, let me be clear, the dean doesn’t hate the English Department or anyone in it. I respect Nancy’s political commitment and activism. I write her when I know she hasn’t gotten it right or I think there’s been some distortion, but I’ve never written and suggested that she shouldn’t do what she’s doing and I’ve never questioned her motives. When Andrew Barnaby was the union grievance officer, he was a pit bull. Dealing with him had the effect on my emotional state you think that dealing with a pit bull would have, but that’s beside the point. I’m a grown-up. I understood that this was a role that he was taking very seriously and I respected him for the passion and dedication he demonstrated in presenting an employee’s cause. I could also talk at length about the talent and scholarly excellence that clearly characterizes the Dept and its various specialties in film, creative writing, etc. I couldn’t be more proud to be the dean of the college that houses the English Department.
So I would ask you to analyze decisions and ask questions about them that acknowledge organizational and financial exigencies and factual knowledge about attempts to spread scarce resources equitably. Let’s admit that organizations are human inventions and humans do the best they can. Let’s give one another in the College the benefit of the doubt. But, please, let’s not recapitulate high school. More importantly, you will neither engage the larger issues of governance and resource allocation in the College, nor understand the challenges and opportunities the College faces. At this time in the institution’s history, the need couldn’t be greater for College faculty to do both.
